Hi,

Just inherited a British Eagle Mountain Bike - yeh, I know, itīs crap (lol), but its a project for me to renovate. Will post the pictures tomorrow, its totally rusty and finished really.

So, what am I going to do. I am going to completely overhaul the thing, something to do, and a bike for my wife really.

So, problem 1. Getting the standard decals off the bike. An tips for taking off the decals ?

Cheers .

hello ? lol

You can spend a lot of time and money trying to make a purse out of a sow's ear. But it is still a sow's ear.

I'm with this guy; don't bother learning to fix or restore bikes, just sit on the couch indoors and you won't even need to ride! Problem solved!


"Polishing a turd", or however you want to put it, is a good way to learn to fix bikes in my opinion, and it's very satisfying to turn a crap bike into a nice one.

What are you having trouble with getting the decals off? If they're just stickers, peel them off by hand and use some sticky goo remover. If they're the metal ones and you don't want to keep them, just pry them off with a screwdriver while protecting the frame. If you want to keep the decals, the best method is to heat them up with a hair-dryer until the glue melts and you can remove them.

They might also be lacquered onto the frame if the bike has a nicer paint job. If this is the case you will have to strip it and re-paint to remove them. This is best done professionally and is quite a bit of work to do well.

Good luck with your project

Thanks mikezs for your positive response, other "neggers" will just be ignored, they ruin great forums like this.

My sentiments exactly, havenīt taken a bike to bits since my early teens so looking forward to getting it road worthy. Everything looks serviceable to me, except the chain maybe, thats yet to be determined.

The decals are not metal, they are like a normal transparent thin plastic type sticker - The thing is that I just canīt budge them, canīt even get my finger under properly so I am guessing after what you said, that they are laquered on in some way. Going to have a closer look a bit later, maybe see if the hair-dryer method changes things.

Here is a british eagle "Boss" I use as my urban commuter. Hair dryer took all mine off

Don't think anyone is being negitive yet, but you post stuff like

Any ppl aren't going to be too interested. You did this a couple of hours after your orginal post, in which you said you would post pics, no sign of them yet, so no-one can really really say anything about your specific bike yet, from memory British Eagle weren't bad bikes but like may brands, got worse over the years.

Just got back from work, sorry didnīt get a chance to take the photos before work this morning.

Cheers jeff, was thinking to do mine in Black too :-)

Edit, decided not to do black as didnīt have any black paint/spray, thought I did have at the time.

OK, here is the finished article.

Total spend - 4.25Euros. LoL. I had some blue spray lying around so used that for the main colour. I used some white hammerite I had for the white but it didnīt look very good so I did buy a tin of white spray which was 4.25Euros. The Grey parts are a hammerite I had and I used these where the wheels fix, for the brake calipers etc, nice and tough. I was going to buy a new chain but decided against it after getting it to loosen up.

At the end of the day my wife is going to use it for pottering at the bottom of the street with the kids, they have just learned to ride so its exciting when we can be with them on bikes too. The "renovation" simply makes it ride-able for her and cost me nothing, pretty happy with the finish.

I will say that if she was going to anymore than pottering at the bottom of the street, I would have put new tyres on, may still do so.


What I did.

Totally stripped it down to the frame alone. Sanded down frame completely after removing stickers - Had a nightmare taking the stickers off, used a rotary wirebrush in a drill in the end, they just wouldnīt move, almost decided to leave them on then eventually got the hardcore wire brush out LOL - Took some sanding down after the brush, but result is better IMO.

Sprayed frame in a light blue. Sprayed forks and rear arms in a white, using a mist fade into the blue.

Painted all brake calipers in Hammerite Glossy Grey.

Fixed front puncture.

Re-greased all components.

Buffed some parts using Dremel Tool.

Replaced some bolts from large selection of stock nuts and bolts.

Removed and discarded the bar ends. Put some new grips on which were bought for some reason or other ages ago (only a couple of Euros).

Re-installed all parts and re-set gears, brakes etc.

One problem - The brakes are very loud, both are the same, when pulling them on they do like a LOUD low pitched squeal - Maybe new shoes are required ? I do have some spare ones so no problem to change them over.

Oh, just remembered - I did have to buy a crank extractor tool, but I wanted one anyway. That was another 4€ though, off FleaBay.

Looks great!

APART from that crappy aged orange spoke protector! Get that sprayed grey (like the brakes) or grab a new one!

Adjusting toe-in for brakes should eliminate squeal (unless they're new, then just wait for them to bed in properly)

Good effort all-in-all!

Thatīs a good point on the spoke protector, I never even thought about painting it.. :-) Will do that later.

The brake shows arenīt new, they are just re-installed so will try the toe-in.

Cheers.

I would try the hairdryer heat gun method. My luck on getting decals to come off older bikes for repaint is about 50/50. You my find you will have to choose between taping over the decals and repaint or just refinishing painting the bike without the decals. I real good paint shop restorer can usuaslly get the decals removed or duplicated but this would cost more than the bike is worth. I full professional restore on the paint finish on a old bike can cost several hundred dollars.

Don't give up or quit trying just because you run into some minor problems like this with some time and TLC I'm confident you should be able to get the bike running and looking good for a reasonable price.